I relate to this so much, and I too am wishing you well.
I hope you get a chance to actually curl up in a corner and cry, with appropriate privacy, at some point today. My own experience is that it helps, for whatever reasons. (The biggest thing I miss about having a private office is the opportunity to occasionally curl up in a ball and hide under my desk when needed.)
First serious gout in a long time. I was at work, and over the course of an hour I could feel me right foot inflating like a balloon. I have emergency medication for this… But you drive a car with your right foot.
So I made a very,very hasty exit, and when I got home my toes were a half inch off the ground. I don’t even care about the pain any more, I have to walk and drive. Otherwise I am unemployed.
I am now hopped up on 60mg of prednisone, with more in the pipeline. I also have hydrocodone. But taking them together rather defeats the point, so I get to be Roid raged for a day or three, and Just Deal With It.
I swear to FSM I must have nerve damage in my right foot. It feels weird.
I’d offer RL hugs but with a dad who took that for a major arthritic flare up and a friend who took it for crones, I know how short tempered it makes a person. So internet hugs? Though I imagine the roid raging is preferable to the gout pain.
I thought I had it under control. Haven’t needed any in a long time. It kind of is a wonder drug, but long term use has serious side effects. Like your head just falls right off 
I know that you know that I know that nothing I say will magically make you feel better. But I am still gonna tell you some honest to FSM truths.
You are disarmingly funny and honest. In that way that feels authentic, empathetic, and most of all charming.
Depression is the dark rider in your life, but I never hear your voice as depressed. I hear wisdom, gratitude, and kindness.
I don’t think I have ever read something you wrote that has been disparaging. Critical? Yes, but always with a grounded self awareness.
Life is nasty, short, brutish, and hard. However you transcend that observation in so many ways.
Gout blows. I had it on 9/11/2009 – the last day at an old job after being there for 10+ years. Ended up in the ER since I had no idea what gout was, and on Monday I was hobbling myself on to a plane. FSMspeed.
The first one I had was in… 2007, and lasted 40 days. My wife accidentally stepped on my foot and the scream that erupted sent her to bawling tears.
It’s better now. You’ve got to his it hard and fast, like 30 minutes fast with anti inflammatory meds. I’m still inflamed but its down by half.
And I feel like I want to build anything 
40 days? Jesus H. Yeah I had it in my big toe for 3-4 days. It was bad but short, It was once and done. I am a vegetarian so it wasn’t what I ate. Who knows. My big toe hurts now just thinking about it. Seriously bro - hope it’s better soon.
All my direct male line have it. Diet absolutely factors in, but in my case diet is a trigger, not the cause. A lifetime of alloprurinol for me 
The first couple times were excruciating. But you figure out how to anticipate and manage. Which is why I kinda freaked out during work today, cause I forgot my bugout bag.
When the foot that drives your car swells so big, so fast, you can’t drive a car to get the stuff to stop the swelling all sorts of alarms go off in your head.
depending how well you can laugh at your condition… Charlie Chaplin’s The Cure has the much larger Eric Campbell as a gout suffering foil for Charlie.
Ye gods.
Being only vaguely familiar (I have a first-cousin Üwe who loooooves his beer and sausage; he’s 100% right-off-the-boat German stock), I had to go look up the facts about gout just to grok what the heck it’s all about. I already knew that Üwe had those beers/rich meats as triggers.
Wow. So many nerve endings in human feet, too.
Then I looked up countermeasures, because I knew most Official Medical Science says there’s no cure for gout. The “avoid these triggers” list is a rogue’s gallery of all the tasty stuff that makes life… tasty. Dang! Life is full of veritable landmines, no?
For a while, I was trying to dodge coffee (I had suspected it was a trigger for my migraines), drinking either DandyBlend (on tap at my chiropractor’s–not bad!) or Raja’s Cup (expensive!–moreso than even good coffee; it tastes ok). I also tried this by Teecino, also not bad. Not great, but not bad. Then I’d go look for an electric socket to jolt myself awake the rest of the way, just like Dr. Lizardo in Buckaroo Banzai.
I kid. I kid. But…
On other thing comes to mind, and I don’t know if it’s all that helpful. Long ago I had a boyfriend who had to take prednisone (daily) for his asthma. He used to take the edge off with pot brownies. Keeping in mind that THC etc. etc. tends to affect one more strongly in stuff like baked goods, it was typical for him to nibble, bite by bite, on brownies, all day long, just enough to keep him from being a snarling 'roid victim. He sometimes would set a timer to ensure timed doses, and he’d cut the brownies up into uniform bites, ~1" cubes. His self-discipline to not simply gobble down the entire brownie pan was pretty admirable–it took a lot for me to not want to gobble down a big slice myself! Obviously smoking pot was out of the question, since his lungs were already compromised by his asthma.
Obviously if you’re involved in the kind of work that precludes this type of self-medicating, this is of no help. And if they drug-test at your workplace, that goes double. I know you’re in San Francisco these days. Maybe the job climate there is more tolerant.
Good luck Sir. Keep breathin’ and stay away from those blutwursts, I suppose.
; - )
That sounds a lot like something we used to drink in Britain at night, because (mixed with milk) it felt somewhat like having a cup of coffee late at night without the worry of caffeine. However, it’s not going to fool anyone…if you think of it as a warm dark drink it’s fine, but it’s not coffee:
In college, a roommate introduced me to Postum. I never developed a taste for it, in the end it was too molasses-y for me to enjoy. Kinda heavy and coats my tongue all wrong.
That Pero looks like it doesn’t have any molasses though. Looks like it may be similar to Cafix, some of those ingredients overlap. Cafix is ok-ish (beet root makes it sweet in a weird way).
My chiropractor reminds me that DandyBlend is [supposed to be] good for me. It’s got minerals and, I dunno, some magical good things in it. It’s additive, healthwise, and not subtractive to the adrenals the way coffee is, or so he says. He’s nearly 70 and still in practice. He still seems to be having fun. I probably should be listening harder to what he says.
Small does ofweed absolutely takes the edge off the steroid feeling. And it’s good for the pain as well. I may look into getting a card here in CA. My current works stance seems to be, “kick serious ass at your job and don’t be self destructive”. That may change one day if we land say a federal contract, but till then drug testing hasn’t even been mentioned.
Oh, and the list of triggers? Pretty great, right? But I can walk this morning with only a minor limp, so I think I 'roided it in time.
There should be some kinda EpiPen-like pressurized countermeasure formulated to address acute gout attacks. An instant Thor’s Hammer that you can carry, self-dose in seconds, and get ahead of the attack before it goes full blown and >poof< an entire day is shot to hell.
Mind you, I’m not saying the EpiPen can be used for gout!
http://www.ehealthme.com/quick_search/gout
Sounds like EpiPens themselves can be a trigger.
Glad to hear you’re feeling better.
Edited for clarity
Fuck this nonsense, what is this?
I know fashion magazines are in business to sell image, but what the fuck is this?
Also how much does this cost per day? I’m saying $80USD per day, retail.
A day is a mild attack. The biggest one (did I mention this? Don’t remember) was 40 days long. I couldn’t leave the house, nothing could touch my right foot, I couldn’t put on a sock or shoe (cause it was swollen to a size 30), and no drug combos worked. I was basically the Prince of Dorn (game of thrones :D).
But a steroid pen sounds like a great idea. I wonder if they exist? As you obviously know, prednisone is a wonder drug for loads of ailments.
Hmm… Pharma startup idea? 
Is that taken up on the “Fuck That Biblically Specific Time Span” thread?
That sounds horrible. Crikey.
I haven’t any acquaintances in pharma who could even reality-check the worthiness of the idea as a startup, but I totally agree that there oughta be… somehow… a series of pressurized Dr. McCoy shots that can address medically critical/medical emergency situations. Haven’t the Swiss or the Germans already gotten this ready for primetime? It sure seems like a venture they would have pursued a decade ago.
Dang. Bacon was just her last name.
Life of The Beautiful People.
The Beautiful High-Maintenance People Whose Ecological Footprint Must Be Measured in Units x10^23.
